In North Africa’s political spheres, stepping down from rule

In North Africa’s political spheres, Algeria’s Bouteflika reaching his mandate end by April, stepping down from rule looks more like a bet placed on his health condition than any constitutional arrangement.

In next door Tunisia, the president has a history of brain strokes that also placed him on a wheelchair.

Youssef Cherifwrote on January 9th, 2019 that Less
than a year before the next general election, scheduled for late 2019, Tunisia
is again in crisis. The Arab world’s most promising democratic experiment can
still avert a political meltdown, but it needs help.

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi attends a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of Tunisia’s independence at the Carthage palace in Tunis, on March 20, 2016, as the country reels from a series of deadly jihadist attacks that have battered its already struggling economy.
Last year, IS claimed attacks on the Bardo museum in Tunis and a popular resort hotel, killing 59 tourists in total, and the suicide bombing of a bus that killed 12 presidential guards.
On March 7, 2016 dozens of jihadists mounted a dawn assault on security installations in Ben Guerdane, which is near the border with unrest-plagued Libya. On March 19 Tunisian authorities said two “terrorists” were killed close to the southern town of Ben Guerdane near the border with Libya.
/ AFP / FETHI BELAID (Photo credit should read FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)

TUNIS – When anti-government protests swept across
the Arab world in 2011, Tunisia seemed poised to emerge better off. Yet, by
2013, the democratic process was almost derailed by unfulfilled economic
promises, political and ideological disagreements, and foreign meddling.
Fortunately, local and international mediation then helped to avert catastrophe and
pave the way for elections.

But less than a year before the next general
election, scheduled for late 2019,
the country is again in crisis. This time, however, mediators are either
disinterested in solutions or part of the problem. In a world focused on the
war in Syria, instability in Libya, Russian assertiveness, European
uncertainty, and the tweets of an isolationist American president, Tunisia has
faded from the headlines. Tunisia’s democratic breakdown would, one assumes,
attract international attention; but by then, it will be too late.

The current stalemate began soon after the December
2014 presidential election. In February 2015, President Beji Caid Essebsi,
founder of the secular political party Nidaa Tounes, struck a deal with Rached
Ghannouchi, president of the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, to form a coalition government.
But soon after, Nidaa Tounes was beset by infighting and, in January 2016,
dozens of the party’s MPs resigned in protest, giving Ennahda a parliamentary majority.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, Essebsi’s
protégé and appointee, has been challenging the 92-year-old president’s inner
circle, throwing Nidaa Tounes further into chaos. By
mid-2018, as the party’s turmoil peaked, Ghannouchi was supporting Chahed
rather than the president’s son and groomed heir, Hafedh Caid Essebsi. The
president, reacting either to a sense of betrayal or out of fear for his
legacy, responded by renewing his criticism of Ennahda and
by launching an investigation into allegations that Ghannouchi’s party is tied to terrorism.

Moreover, Essebsi and his clan embraced populist
rhetoric and restarted courting the anti-Islamist
Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian axis. Essebsi even endorsed a law to give
men and women equal inheritance rights, a measure that is supported by many
secular Tunisians and praised by the international community, but loathed by
Ennahda’s conservative base.

In a well-functioning democracy, an early election
would have been called in September 2018, when the governing coalition felt apart,
and perhaps as early as 2016, when Nidaa Tounes lost its majority in
parliament. But most Tunisian political parties suffer too much dissension or
are too weak to run. And the current ructions are even jeopardizing the work of
the Independent
High Authority for Elections.

Tunisia’s political crisis is occurring alongside
an economic one. As Tunisia has moved from a controlled economy under
dictatorship to a transitional one marked by austerity measures and structural
reforms dictated by the International
Monetary Fund, corruption has spread and investors have fled. Today,
with public debt, unemployment, and inflation growing, strikes and protests are
increasingly common, and support for democracy – frequently
portrayed as the cause of the current tumult – has dwindled.

Ennahda, an economically liberal party that draws
important support from informal economic circles and outside the public sector,
backed the IMF’s economic reforms; the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT),
which represents public-sector workers, did not. Leftists and many remnants of
the former regime were also opposed. Chahed, meanwhile, was aggressive in
implementing the IMF-backed reforms, in part to win support from abroad. But
his approach put the UGTT, alongside old-guard politicians and some key
socioeconomic groups, on the same side as Essebsi. In fact, the UGTT led the
mediations during the crisis of 2013.

Foreign influence is another destabilizing factor.
Today, Tunisia is a geopolitical battlefield
for regional powers like Egypt, Turkey, and the Gulf states, and Tunisian
politicians occasionally take sides to suit their suitors’ goals. Broadly
speaking, Saudi Arabia and the UAE demonize Tunisia’s democracy and Ennahda,
while Qatar and Turkey laud both. Both camps have their clients in the country.
These players amplify coup rumors and delegitimize Tunisia’s political
independence, which adds to the public’s distrust
of the government. Back in 2013, the US, Europe, and Algeria limited the reach
of these countries. Ironically, in 2018, it is the US, the EU, and Algeria that
are rattled by internal divisions and terrified of foreign interference.

History holds many lessons for those navigating
Tunisia’s tumult, with some particularly apt parallels to be found in Russia’s
post-Soviet transition. There, during his final years in power, a weakened
Boris Yeltsin sought to secure his presidential legacy and save his family from prosecution. Hence, the
so-called “father of Russian democracy”
appointed then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, to succeed
him. Russia’s democracy never recovered.

Tunisia’s infighting and nepotistic policies have a
similar feel. The Arab world’s most promising democratic experiment can still
avert a political meltdown, but it needs help. Local and international
mediators guided Tunisia from turmoil once before. They must do so again.